Abstract

The notion of hope occupies a central position in Paulo Freire’s work. Since he understands hope to be a motor for change, an ontological necessity and a political act, Freire concludes that it is important to educate hope so that it is not converted into infertile hopelessness or tragic despair. Imbued with Freirean spirit, my purpose in this paper is to construct a dialogue between this great educator’s thoughts and those of Spinoza. This impossible encounter between these two men who rebelled in thought and action against the oppressions of their times will occur through the investigation of the following themes: 1) the role of hope in the Freirean conception of history; 2) relationships between freedom and necessity; 3) hope’s social functions and 4) Freire’s proposal of an ‘education of hope’. Two notions of hope will be discussed: naïve hope and critical hope. The spinozist provocation consists in suggesting an ethical and political attitude which is primarily moved by our power to think and act and is, therefore, not based on hope